Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com.
You might think that you won’t be able to sell a digital product to your audience because there are people that know more than you that are already selling better digital products than you could possibly put together yourself. You might also think that no one would buy any digital products from you because everything that you could teach is already on your website. You might even be afraid that you have nothing of value to offer that people would actually want to pay money for. Many online entrepreneurs have these hang-ups, but they aren’t valid reasons to give up on selling digital products before you even begin.
There are several reasons why your audience will buy products and services from you:
- They want to learn something – Some people see digital products as an alternative to participating in a class or a workshop that teaches them how to do something. Online courses, e-books and other digital products are attractive because you have the opportunity to learn from an expert at your own pace. Two different trends are fueling a boom in online learning—people value experiences much more than they used to and companies are looking for increasingly looking at what skills potential employees have over what degrees they have. By teaching people how to do things, you can help them create experiences for themselves or help them how to be more attractive to potential employers.
- They love you and can’t get enough of you – Oprah could recommend the worst book in the world and some people would still buy it, because they absolutely love Oprah, want to be like Oprah and want to get their hands on everything that she makes and endorses. You probably won’t build an audience the size of Oprah’s, but if you create good content and inject your personality into the content that you create, a percentage your audience will fall in love with you and your content. They’ll like your content so much that they will buy whatever digital products you create and sell simply because they want to spend more time with you and your content. Even if there is a better digital product out there than the one you sell, they will buy your digital products because they want to learn from you.
- They want convenience – Even if all of your material is available for free on your website, some people will still buy an e-book or online course from you because they want all of the information in one place that they can consume from start to finish. I would much rather pay $4.99 for an e-book or $100.00 for an online course that had all the best advice someone could give me than spending hours upon hours trying to dig through their website. Increasingly, people are recognizing how little time they have to work on hobbies and side projects and are much more willing than ever to pay for a package of information that helps them learn how to do something quickly and effectively.
They want to thank you – Some people will have gotten so much value out of the content that you offer for free on your website that they will buy something from you as a way of paying you for the value they have already gotten from you. They might have not even intend to consume the digital product you sold them, but want to give you some money as a way to say thank you for the value that you have already created for them.